Fred van Dyke and Peter Cole were two of the California surfers lured to Hawai'i by the siren call of that Makaha wave. Van Dyke was a San Francisco native, born in 1930, who learned to surf at Santa Cruz when he was 20. Cole was a lifeguard and surfer from Santa Monica. They met while surfing in Santa Cruz, when Cole was a student at Stanford and Van Dyke was teaching in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Van Dyke was in the teacher's lounge when he saw that famous Makaha newspaper photo. He quit his job the next day, moved to Hawai'i, and was instrumental in luring Cole and several others to follow him. Fred Van Dyke and Peter ColeSFL, 39:56, Peter Cole at MakahaCole and Van Dyke were two of the leading big-wave surfers of the '50s and into the '60s, members of an elite group of Hawaiians and haole who challenged the giant surf at Makaha, Sunset Beach and, later, Waimea Bay. The great Hawaiian surfers of the era included Eddie Aikau and Buffalo Keaulana. Unlike most surfers at the time, who scraped by through the winter on money scrounged from summer jobs, Cole and Van Dyke had teaching credentials and took positions at the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu. Cole and Van Dyke became known as the surfing teachers, and were occasionally rumored to be absent from staff meetings when the surf was smoking on the other sides of the islands.Cole and Van Dyke became famous surfers as surfing emerged from the shadows of obscurity and into the mainstream culture during the late '50s and early '60s. Beginning with filmmaker, Bud Browne, a southern Californian who pioneered the surf movie in the mid-'50s, more and more photographers, cinematographers, musicians and journalists became fascinated with surfing, and what began as a novelty exploded into a full-fledged industry in the '60s.